After installing Django MongoDB Backend and creating a MongoDB Atlas cluster, you can create a Django project that connects to MongoDB.
Create a Django project
From your shell, run the following command to create a new Django project called quickstart based on a custom template:
django-admin startproject quickstart --template https://github.com/mongodb-labs/django-mongodb-project/archive/refs/heads/5.2.x.zip
Note
Project Template
The django-mongodb-project template resembles the default Django project template but makes the following changes:
Includes MongoDB-specific migrations
Modifies the
settings.pyfile to instruct Django to use anObjectIdvalue as each model's primary key
After running this command, your quickstart project has the following file structure:
quickstart/ manage.py mongo_migrations/ __init__.py contenttypes/ auth/ admin/ quickstart/ __init__.py apps.py settings.py urls.py asgi.py wsgi.py
Update your database settings
Open your settings.py file and navigate to the DATABASES setting. Replace this setting with the following code:
DATABASES = { "default": { "ENGINE": "django_mongodb_backend", "HOST": "<connection string URI>", "NAME": "sample_mflix", }, }
Replace the <connection string URI> placeholder with the connection string that you copied from the Create a Connection String step of this Get Started guide.
This configures your Django app to connect to your Atlas cluster and access the sample_mflix sample database.
Start the server
To verify that you installed Django MongoDB Backend and correctly configured your project, run the following command from your project root:
python manage.py runserver
Then, visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/. This page displays a "Congratulations!" message and an image of a rocket.
After completing these steps, you have a Django project configured to use MongoDB.